


The Lords Play Their Game

by TeamGwenee



Series: Top Ten Tags Fic [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, Murder, Scheming and Bribing, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamGwenee/pseuds/TeamGwenee
Summary: It is Modern Day Westeros, but still the Great Houses play by their own rules. When Brienne is wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of Renly Baratheon, she is set to find out how much.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Top Ten Tags Fic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812091
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	The Lords Play Their Game

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series where I write a fic based on the top ten most popular 'additional tags'.

“I’m innocent.” That was all Brienne could say. “I am innocent.”

No one cared. No one thought to listen. No one wanted to. It was too good a story. The great, ugly bitch, murdering the handsome, soft-hearted Renly Baratheon in a fit of crazed jealousy, and leaving his beautiful wife a widow.

Still she said it. “I am innocent.”

“All evidence points towards your guilt,” Stannis Baratheon’s representative pointed out when the guard’s back was turned. “Admit you killed him, plead for insanity, leave Lord Baratheon out of this, and we will have you sent to a good facility, which can give you the care and treatment you need.”

“I don’t need treatment,” Brienne hissed, “I need justice. I need the real culprit sentenced and Renly’s true murderer behind bars.”

“As far as the kingdom is concerned, his true murderer is behind bars. Poor Renly, so handsome, with so many wonderful ideas to change the kingdom. Cut down so young and so brutally. Who will mourn his murderer, when the guards look away for a moment too long?” Melisandre’s smile stretched, her red, sticky lipstick and garish slash across her pale face. “The men we hire are very good. I am assured this time it will look like a suicide. Or, you could do what is best for you and plead guilty.”

“Or what?” Brienne growled.

“Or wait for the shadows to fall. For the night is young and full of terror.”

~

That night in her cell, Brienne closed her eyes and thought of Jaime.

That’s what so many of the papers got wrong. Brienne wasn’t in love with Renly. Not anymore. Not since Jaime came crashing into her life. 

She thought about the day they first met. Both of them escaped a tedious dinner for Renly’s campaign. Brienne supported Renly’s push to take his brother’s seat as the Stormlands’ political rep, but how she loathed the smarming up it required. 

She re-ran that first meeting, the amusement in Jaime’s eyes when he saw that she too was making a break for it. The comical way he ducked as they passed a window and pressed himself against the wall at every corner, checking to see if the coast was clear. The burger and chips they shared in the little diner, both still dressed in formal evening wear. They had kept their relationship private. Brienne wasn’t ready to deal with the publicity that came with dating the Lannister heir.

She had revisited that day so many times, trying to reason how she, tall, awkward and plain, had found a love story with a man like Jaime.

Now, she tried to bury herself in those memories. When the shadows came, she didn’t want her last thoughts to be how scared she was. She wanted to be thinking of Jaime, his arms around her, his lips pressed to her neck.

She heard a shuffle, a breath, and jammed her eyes shut.

Her cell was locked. Maximum security. There was no way anyone was getting in. Not without help. She wondered how high the bribe had to be.

_ Jaime taking her to the Museum of Westeros History. Their giddy excitement as they took in the legendary Valyrian Steel swords. Jaime buying plastic replicas and challenging her for the last muffin in the museum cafe. _

The footsteps drew closer.

_ Jaime laughing, his chest rumbling against hers. His smile, so sharp and bright. His eyes, how they creased in pleasure each time he looked on her. _

The shadow was above her. Her skin broke into goosebumps.

_ Jaime wrapping his arms around her during winter, his grip so firm and warm. His hand caressing her cheek. She could feel it. _

She could feel it.

Brienne opened her eyes to see a pair of wicker green eyes glittering down on her.

“Jaime?” she croaked, wondering for one glorious minute if it had all been a dream.

“Shhh,” Jaime whispered. He looked over his shoulder. “Is the coast clear?”

Brienne looked up to see Sandor Clegane, a handyman for Jaime’s father, stood in the doorway of her cell.

“We’ve got an hour to get her safely out,” Sandor grunted. “We’re good if we get moving.”

“What-?” Brienne asked, but Jaime shook his head.

“I’ll explain everything later, but first we need to get you out.”

~

As Sandor predicted, they got out of the jail with astonishing little interference. It was pitch black, but Sandor clearly knew where he was going as he led the three of them down twisting corridors and back stairs. Jaime kept his hand on the small of Brienne’s back, guiding her forwards, until they reached a grey concrete courtyard. Waiting for them was a black van with tinted windows. Jaime swiftly ushered her into the back as Sandor got into the front and started it up, the van whirring to life.

“How?” Brienne stuttered, shivering as the night air bit through her thin prison issued pyjamas.

“Never underestimate a Lannister, Wench,” Jaime told her, pulling her to his chest and running his hands up and down her goose pimpled arms. “Nor the magic of gold.”

“Stannis-”

“Will not be able to get to you. His people wouldn’t even have thought of implicating you if they had known you were connected to me. Someone clearly didn’t do their homework.”

“Is it so simple?” Brienne asked bitterly. “A Baratheon can put who they please into a cell, and a Lannister can take who they please out. You lot can play with our lives so easily. Just put the money into the right hands, drop the word, and the law is your plaything.”

“ _ Our lot,  _ as you put it, have always followed rules unto ourselves. It’s disgusting, corrupt and unjust. But sometimes it is bloody useful. It got you out.”

“I wouldn’t have been in if the law was fair,” Brienne hissed, trying to break from his grip.

“And it will bring Renly justice, in a way,” Jaime added.

Brienne raised an eyebrow. “How?”

“Tomorrow, it will be announced that you killed yourself,” Jaime told Brienne. “An inquest will be held, and low and behold, said inquest will lead to Stannis Baratheon’s name to crop up in the most scandalous of places, and suddenly the oh so honourable Stannis Baratheon who murdered his brother without a care for the one who took the fall, will be before a judge himself. A judge who we can be sure will be ruthless in the pursuit of justice.”

“We can be sure because you paid them to be so,” Brienne said wryly.

Jaime just tapped the side of his nose. 

He saw the grim look on Brienne’s face and sighed. 

“The Lannisters are a scheming, twisted bunch. But I’ve never done anything like this before, and at the risk of sounding like a child, we didn’t start it. He cheated, so we cheated. This is just making the playing field equal.”

“And me?” Brienne asked quietly, “What will happen to me?”

“A new life, new start. It’s all sorted. Identity, passports. There is a jet waiting for us.”

“Us?” Brienne repeated.

“Us,” Jaime confirmed. “If you would have me join you.”

“Within a matter of weeks, I have seen a friend murdered, I have had my name destroyed. I have been charged with murder, I have lost my liberty and now I will lose my identity.” Brienne looked at Jaime fiercely into his eyes. “I am not losing you too.” She hesitated, before her mouth thinned and her jaw set.

“But before we get onto a jet, I would like to make a housecall. If we’re taking justice into our own hands, it is right that I played a part.”

~

Stannis was never an easy sleeper. Too many cares. Too great a burden.

His brother’s death only added to his troubles.

He rethought Melisandre’s words to him, the day before Renly’s murder, again and again, and tried to tell himself that nothing Melisandre had said could have told him. Nothing she said even confirmed that she was involved somehow. And his own response to her subtle suggestions that it would be so convenient if Renly would just go away, could in no way have been taken as his endorsement of such an act.

No. Brienne Tarth murdered Renly. Stannis was blameless.

Still, sleep tormented him.

He paced around his bedroom, trying to think of something other than his younger brother and his hideous friend.

There was a creak, and Stannis froze. He berated himself for his flight of fancy. There was no one in the house but him. His home had a state of the art security system, and it would take monstrously deep pockets to bribe his guards to shut it down, just for a second. 

Still, he heard creaks. And was that a shadow passing beneath his door?

To his own disgust, Stannis felt his heart beat faster and sweat trickle down his forehead. What was he? A child, seeing monsters in the shadow? 

‘Cool off in the bathroom,’ he told himself. ‘You are over hot. Cool yourself off, then get some rest.’

Still, he waited until he thought he heard the footsteps fade, before switching on all the lights and making his way to his bathroom with some haste.

In the mirror above his sink, he saw his own face, grey and gaunt and ghastly. And smeared in soap, he saw the message left for him by shadow walking his halls.

_ Now there are two. Will your hands ever be clean? _

When the police came for Stannis, charging him with the murder of Renly Baratheon, and the framing of Brienne Tarth, Stannis came quietly. And in the end, Jaime’s bribes were unneeded. Stannis confessed to everything. He named his accomplices and took responsibility for the deaths of his brother, and the poor woman who was driven to suicide by the shame his actions brought her.

All the while, he was unaware that in the Southern Isles, one Brienne Storm sat sipping cocktails in the front room of her luxurious Beach House, watching his trial, and smiling. 


End file.
